MagTek, a Seal Beach, California-based provider of secure payment technology, announced this week it will provide merchants with free access to its card authentication database, which stores the unique magnetic-stripe "fingerprints" of genuine payment cards. The company says the recent breaches of cardholder data at numerous U.S. merchant sites prompted it to share its database of magnetic-stripe fingerprints free of charge with the merchant community and law enforcement agencies.

MagTek houses its Global MagnePrint Exchange registry at its subsidiary Magensa, which provides decryption, tokenization, dynamic authentication, device management and payment gateway services to merchants and processors. Over the past year, Magensa has harvested and stored the magnetic-stripe fingerprints of millions of cards that passed through its gateway.

MagTek says that a query to the Global MagnePrint Exchange gives the retailer authoritative risk management information about the card itself. If the card is a clone or counterfeit, a red flag alert is reported to the merchant. Conversely, a genuine card reports a green flag. A free query to the Global MagnePrint Exchange can stop fraud in real time, MagTek says.

"With or without EMV, PCI is not working," Annmarie Hart, MagTek's CEO, said in a statement. "It's an expensive set of rules focused on compliance, rather than fraud reduction. Our system accepts the fact that skimming cannot be prevented and takes measures to detect and alert merchants to the presence of cloned cards. We are pleased to offer this 'query for free' service to merchants and law enforcement agencies, so that as a community we can turn the tables on the criminals and put them out of business."

Read more about data security.